A guardian, such as a mother, travelling in public and being accompanied with an infant who is still unable to take care of himself, frequently feels much inconvenience because of the absence of an adequate arrangement for safely accommodating and protecting the infant when the person desires to use a public lavatory or adjust her makeup or tidy her dress.
Some facilities, such as department stores and railway stations, have gradually come to furnish small-sized beds (such as baby cots) for keeping the infant therein or small chairs in some places in lavatories and powder rooms in an attempt at dealing adequately with such problems. However, the use of a baby cot or the like has shortcomings in that it occupies a large space inside a lavatory or a powder room because of the large size of a baby cot, with the result that the total area of the lavatory is eventually reduced. Also such arrangements fall short of consideration for the safe confinement and protection of the infant in case the infant accommodated in a baby cot moves about therein.
Accordingly, guardians have been typically inconvenienced in that, in a place where a baby cot or the like is not provided or even in a place where a baby cot or the like is provided, a guardian has been obliged to enter a compartment in a lavatory together with the infant to relieve herself while keeping an eye on the infant for safety as mentioned above.
Furthermore, although it is proposed in the Official Gazette for Utility Model Laid Open No. 100743-1986 that a chair for an infant be installed inside a lavatory compartment, the baby chair is a common-type chair with the main body thereof being composed of the back part and the seat part and with a handrail provided to extend from the back part at the height of the armrest to enclose the front region of the said chair, and with a slip-preventing band being provided between the central region at the fore ends of the handrail and the central part of the front part of the seat.
The baby chair of the type mentioned above is ordinarily constructed with both the handrail and the slip-preventing band fixed rigidly, and consequently it is necessary to put the baby in the chair and to remove him from the chair from a point over the main body of the chair, and it is therefore necessary to lift the infant to a high level. It often happens that infant lifting cannot be done smoothly to set the infant in the chair and to remove him from the chair because the infant legs (often kicking) tend to interfere with the handrail and also with the slip-preventing band of the chair.